KC take the L

Southampton’s biggest boys pull up to Jubilee on time (captain was late) with appropriate swimwear (Tweekes’ speedos have a hole in them) and a positive mental attitude (many a people had stated that were going to lose – they were being stupid), ready to face the recently demoted KCL team. With Southampton sport filming the match there was absolutely no pressure whatsoever to perform well so a quick pep talk from Mr James where he reminded his team that they are actually good players and just because KCL also have good players doesn’t mean that suddenly we forget how to play waterpolo.

Kicking off the first quarter, our speedy fresh Mr Hibbetts wins the swim off and trusts Jack to take care of the ball. Jack had forgotten his own talk about knowing what he’s doing and immediately lost the ball with a knaff pass that got blocked. He then doubled down on being an idiot and conceded a penalty only 24 seconds into the match, which KCL scored off. Jack is speed-running an EGM at this point with how poor his waterpolo ability is. Luckily to save the day, head coach Finn Thomas and social sexy Fernando Alvarez bring the goal line to 3-1.

Into the second quarter and continuing his streak of actually just being a massive inconvenience, Mr James scores an own goal. His only defence (because his waterpolo defence is dropping off) being that Ellis did very clearly ask for arms to go up and Jack, being a good dog, does what he’s told. Youssef Hassan bags himself a lovely exclusion and spends some time on the side of the pool. John Nelson puts a blinder in from the right wing and Mr Thomas does what Mr Thomas does best and puts 2 into the net to follow.

Our 3rd quarter proved to be a challenge as the boys tried to keep the momentum going into the second half. Our players were out to get Sam Ellis as 3 penalties (Fernando, Jack and Finn) and an exclusion (John) were conceded. The only goals conceded this quarter were from the penalties which speaks to Ellis doing a cracking job the rest of it. Give a cone of shame to the 3 responsible for giving away those penalties. Youssef attempts to make a dent in the goal diff this quarter with a beautiful goal of his own so we manage to go into the final quarter 10-8.

Final quarter comes into play and I fear that stress sweat was pouring into the pool, and I possibly pissed myself in fear. We went from having a fairly-ish comfortable lead to being neck and neck with 2 minutes left of the match. Our lucky lefties Mr Nelson and Mr Hibbetts were on fire and responsible for scoring all our goals in the final quarter. It was a nail-biting final 2 minutes with a 13-12 scoreline, all we had to do was maintain our defence and hopefully score another few goals. Neither of these happened. Finn Thomas with a minute and a half to go got himself excluded, I personally wouldn’t be doing something like that in this game. Luckily Sam Ellis was blazing in goal and shut down this attack as he had done so exquisitely so many times this match.

The final whistle blew and for the first time in a hot minute Southampton’s biggest boys found themselves on the winning side of a one goal diff match. Big fat well done to the boys because they came together like i’ve never seen before and I just genuinely couldn’t be more proud of the game they gave.

Written by: Jack James

MVP – Andy Hibbetts for his consistent performance throughout the match. He was brilliant at managing his own game time and subbing out when he needed so that he could get back in and put on an incredible show, scoring essential goals to maintaining our lead and always covering his player on the counter.

Honourable mention – Sam Ellis, thank you pookie xx

Dick of the day – Jack James, giving away a penalty in the first 24 seconds is frankly unheard of. Scoring an own goal is also absolutely diabolical and if it wasn’t for the fact he was performing relatively okay outside of these two major fucky uppys he would have been banished to the sub bench and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to blacklist him from Jubilee for the foreseeable future.

Goals/Majors:

Sam Ellis: 0/0

Tom Weekes: 0/0

Elliot Oldham: 0/0

Finn Thomas: 5/2

Michael Scott: 0/0

Andy Hibbetts: 4/0

Ed Wilkes: 0/0

Jack James: -1/2

Fernando Alvarez: 1/2

Oli James: 0/0

John Nelson: 2/1